The way Anna Sweeting, founder of the U.K.-based investment firm The Equity Studio , sees it: “Money is power, and we shouldn’t be shy to talk about that.”

So she said at the 2025 WWD x FN x Beauty Inc Women in Power conference, in conversation with Jefferies’ managing director of beauty and wellness investment banking, Sasha Radic, moderated by WWD senior beauty editor Kathryn Hopkins.

“Women dominate consumption from a purchase-decision perspective; we make up 80 percent of creators with more than 50,000 followers on social media platforms, and we are going to be dominating social commerce,” she continued.

And yet, “the [gender] disparity in funding is still present at the very start.”

Indeed, while women founders have historically received a fraction of the funding of their male c

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